Drawing Room
Entered from a door on the left of the first-floor lobby. This is
the most ambitious of the neo-Georgian interiors executed during
Benjamin Lee Guinness's extensions of 1866. Like the ante-room
below the drawing-room has decorations inspired by the early 1760s
dining-room at the Provost's House, Trinity College: there is the
same dado rail carved with a wave pattern, and the same diagonally
coffered ceiling.
Yet the dainty elegance of the provost's room has not been captured. The reason lies in the very Victorianism of the imitation and the desire to improve on - as well as to simulate - an 18th-century scheme. The ornamentation of the doors and panelling is in plaster, where an 18th-century craftsman would have used wood, and the decorative plasterwork of the ceiling is rather lifeless on close examination. Some of the decorative features are anachronistic - small baronial shields above the fireplaces, pendants to the ceiling coffers, Grecian ivy-leaf mouldings to the door-frames - and a slightly cluttered atmosphere replaces the airiness of the Provost's room.
Yet, on first acquaintance. the room is convincingly mid-Georgian
- so convincing that the writers of the Georgian Society records of
1909-13 included it in their second volume. Besides its
18th-century style, the drawing-room has that atmosphere of comfort
and intimacy which is one of the most pleasant qualities of
Victorian interior design. In former days, this must have been a
charming family room. There are two particularly attractive
features - the six tapestry panels on the inner wall depicting
18th-century couples in tree lined groves, in the manner of the
painters Watteau and Pater, and the two chimney-pieces in
neo-Palladian style their central panels depicting putti with the
symbols respectively, of music and geography.
The floral Baroque-style carpet was designed by Raymond McGrath, its pattern reflecting the design of the ceiling.
